Over 80 per cent of the 50,000 odd government employees’ are upset with the decision of the Congress-led Meghalaya United Alliance (MUA) government to put on hold disbursing of arrears.
The government had decided to hike salary of its employees by 32 per cent with retrospective effect from January 1, 2007. The new pay scale would be implemented from October 1, last as per the recommendation of the Fourth Pay Commission.
“The Finance department should have first assessed its coffer before disbursing arrears to its employees,” a disappointed official said.
What further irked the employees is that most of them were yet to receive their salary for the month of October.
“We have been cheated and the ruling government had gone back on its promise,” another dismayed government employee said.
Principal Secretary in-charge Finance, BK Dev Varma said that the employees would get their arrear in March next year before financial year end.
“The total amount of arrear to be paid to employees is around Rs 300 crore. We will release it after reviewing the financial position of March next year,” Varma said.
Slamming the DD-Lapang-led ministry, the opposition Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) expressed shocked over the decision of the government not to clear payment of arrears to its employees.
“We are shocked to learn that the Government is going back on its promises inspite of the fact that government servants are anyway losing one year of their arrears, which are rightfully due to them,” NCP Spokesperson James K Sangma said.
However, the finance department “seems to have no dearth of funds when it comes to foreign trips being made by the Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister for Finance and repeated foreign trips by the Speaker”.
However, Revenue Minister Prestone Tynsong had claimed that the government would release “pending arrears before Christmas”.